


The Judicious Mixing of Nerve Gases

by rnanqo



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, War Crimes, if puns make you upset turn away now, pool scene but not that pool scene it's a different pool scene, word crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27272275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rnanqo/pseuds/rnanqo
Summary: The Reverend Father and Mother of the Ninth House desperately need a child. How far are they willing to go to get one?ORA couple necromancers plot to gas two hundred children
Comments: 11
Kudos: 41





	The Judicious Mixing of Nerve Gases

**Author's Note:**

> CW: miscarriage

The cramping started just before the Secundarius Bell.

Pelleamena Novenarius wrote out a note, handed it to a construct, and flicked her fingers. The skeleton tottered out to the main shaft with its missive. Pelleamena retreated further into the Reverend Family’s quarters, that dim, incense-choked warren, and took a long time to do what she needed to do. Then she stood up, rearranged her robes, and came out into the main hall. Her husband, Priamhark Noniusvianus, Reverend Father and Head of the House of the Ninth, was standing there, under the antique clavicle chandelier, looking grim.

She said, “It didn’t work.”

Then he just got grimmer.

She said, “I think we’ll have to—”

“Let’s go,” he said.

In the very back of the Reverend Family’s quarters, in a disused sleeping chamber, there was a secret door. It could only be unlocked with two very special keys: a small gold one to be placed on a discreet shelf, the exact weight of which would trip a mechanism that opened a recess in the wall; and a hand-sized key of blackened iron which went in the newly revealed hole. This iron key, turned a precise quarter-turn, revealed a steep hidden staircase that descended into blackness. On the ninetieth stair, turn left. The stairs continued down in their spiral for twenty or more steps—until they didn’t. But off the ninetieth, there was a short passage, which opened into a small bare chamber lit with a single determined electric lightbulb. Set into the floor of this room was a still pool of cold salt water, and into this pool slipped the—childless—Reverend Father and Reverend Mother of the Ninth House.

“So the fontanelle tincture didn’t work,” Pelleamena said bluntly, and Priamhark laughed, not with pleasure. He ducked his head under the water and came up spluttering and newly sleek, like a cormorant. “I think,” she continued, “though there are other things left to try, none of them are as powerful, or as certain. I think it is time to take advantage of the . . . extreme option.”

Even in the salt water, she could barely say these things.

“There’s really no more time?”

The lightbulb flickered briefly, like a warning.

“There could be plenty,” Pelleamena said. “Or there could be none at all. I know many things, but I don’t know when my body is going to decide it’s done.”

Priamhark murmured to himself, “Tempus fugit,” and lifted his feet off the bottom to float a little. There was a small silence, and then he put them back down, squared his shoulders slightly above the five feet of water, and said, “All right.”

“The question is,” Pelleamena said, “what would be most effective?”

This was not a question either of them had yet entertained. The barest whisper of the idea had been brought up in a previous saltwater conversation; specifics had not been touched upon.

“The babies are the highest priority,” Pelleamena said. “Five of them are at least as much thanergy as all the older ones—them first."

“It must be instantaneous,” Priamhark said. “There can’t be any _first_ about it.”

“So what, then? Take them all up to the top of the shaft and—” She stopped herself at the shake of his head. “You’re right. Too much screaming and panic.”

“And outright difficulty. No—asleep is best.”

“We could close off the air vents and set a fire.”

He shook his head so hard droplets of water flew off the ends of his hair. “And risk the entire House going up with it? No. But—”

“Wait,” she said, idea striking, “the air vents.”

They looked at each other for a long, terrible moment.

Then Priamhark said carefully, “I _have_ known the prison to keep a wide supply of nerve gases in stock.”

“Interesting. Many possibilities.”

“We won’t be able to test it, though.”

She nodded. “Have to get it right the first time. Waste of thanergy, otherwise.”

Another small silence. The horror of the idea did not touch them; here in this pool. Perhaps it would never. It couldn’t, if they were to carry out this plan at all.

“It’ll happen at night,” she said, steadfast and singsong. “They’ll all be asleep on their cots. We start the first issuing of gas from the vents in the eastern wall, for the oldest. We take them out first and then another mixture for the middle age group—"

“We can’t be fussing with _stages_ , Mena.”

“It must be precisely calibrated,” Pelleamena said. “If we request too much of it from the prison—”

“I wasn’t going to, exactly, request it,” said Priamhark.

“Only enough to kill each of them. More than that is wasteful.”

He shook his head. “Forget the judicious mixing of nerve gases,” he said. “It’s a pretty idea, but you’ve said yourself, there wouldn’t be any time. The thanergy release has to be near-simultaneous to the conception, and we’ll be otherwise occupied at the moment anyway; to fully take advantage of the release we can’t be running around pumping one mixture through one vent, and then removing it to pump another.”

Pelleamena bit her lip, willing her mind not to latch onto related thoughts of _pumping_. “But how do we account for differences in the acting time amongst differently-developed lungs—”

“Go as strong with it as we possibly can. I’m not worried about the specifics.”

“The waste—”

His hand found hers under the water and squeezed. “Don’t worry about that. If it works, it’ll have been worth it, ten times over, and it has to work.”

“They’re all in the same room. We have never separated the older ones from the younger ones, not even the infants. There’s so much— _air_ in there, in the nursery.”

“No,” he said, drawing her close in the water. “It has to be all at once, the same mixture. They’ll be all asleep in the nursery, none of them will escape—it’s elegant.”

“It is,” she said, and pressed a kiss to his hand. “All right, beloved. We’ll do it that way.”

She felt him smile into her hair.

“One crèche, one blend.”

**Author's Note:**

> did i write this specifically to make a bad pun? yes!!


End file.
